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On 2 - 3 December 2017, the Global Coordinating Office of the International Catholic Migration Commission’s Migration and Development Civil Society (MADE) Network organised a Regional and Global Civil Society Stocktaking and Strategy Meeting ahead of and feeding into the UN Member States’ Stocktaking on the Migration Compact, which took place in Puerto Vallarta. It was entirely self-organized by civil society—with ICMC and the ten other “migration-centered” members of the Action Committee in the lead, along the way inviting the regional civil society consultation coordinators to join in the coordination as well. The meeting was chaired by Ignacio Packer, former head of Terre des Hommes and incoming Executive Director of ICVA (as of January 2018), and Roula Hamati from the Cross Regional Center for Refugees and Migrants in Lebanon, who was the regional coordinator for the MENA civil society consultation on the Global Compact.
Read the final report from the Civil Society Stocktaking and Strategy Meeting
Structure of the meeting
This gathering was structured so as to provide a space for civil society to meet together on priority issues and messages to bring into the government-led Stocktaking Conference taking place on 4-6 December, to strategize for the Negotiations Phase of the GCM that begins in February 2018 and to engage in direct conversations with governments. The meeting used a number of key civil society advocacy documents as compass points for the meeting. In particular, the ten themes addressed in the Now and How: TEN ACTS for the Global Compact, which is a global civil society advocacy document drafted by ICMC and the Core Group of the GFMD International Steering Committee, and signed by over 200 civil society organisations, were used to anchor small group discussions during both days of meetings.
Day 1 was dedicated to civil society “taking stock” of the principal results of the 7 regional consultations and the multiple global events focused specifically on the Migration Compact since December 2016, including both the Dhaka and Berlin GFMDs and the Children on the Move conference in June 2017. 10 smaller group sessions focused each on one of the Now and How: Ten Acts for the Global Compact, explicitly preparing for small table discussions with governments the next day on the same themes. The guiding questions and reporting templates for these Day 1 Group Sessions steered and focused the discussions in preparation for meeting with governments on the same themes the following day.
Day 2 was “government day”, where 50 representatives of 23 of the governments that are leading on international policy in migration, joined the civil society participants for discussions. About half were from ministries and capital, about a third from permanent missions, and about ten were ambassador-level. From 8:30 am through 2:30 pm, they participated actively in a plenary “hearing” of civil society results and priorities—at which many intervened from the floor with questions or perspectives, and two rounds of informal, issue- or region-focused “small table” meetings over 3.5 hours through lunch. These tables picked up one of the ten Now and How Ten Acts, were facilitated by civil society leaders, with each having between 5-8 civil society participants (from the corresponding group session the day before) and 4 – 6 government representatives.
Snapshot of the meeting
77 Number of civil society leaders who met at the civil society stocktaking and strategy meeting in Puerto Vallarta
41 Number of participants who were refugees, migrants or members of the diaspora
55:29 Number of women: men who attended the meeting
56 Number of participants who went on to attend the government-led stocktaking from 4-6 December
4 Number of youth delegates
39:38 Number of participants representing regional and national processes: global processes
Regional/national breakdown: Africa 12; Asia 5; Europe 19; Latin America 17, of which 8 were from Mexico; MENA 6; N. America 13; Pacific 1
50 Number of government representatives from 23 governments attending the small table discussions on Day 2
10 Number of issues pinpointed in the TEN ACTS for the Global Compact which were the basis of group discussions on both days
